Restaurant POS: a plain guide to what it does

Take a napkin and draw two circles.

The first one holds everything that happens at your counter. The second holds every order that never arrives there. Almost all the money in this market is spent filling the first circle, and in most restaurants the second one is bigger. That is the whole argument of this guide, and the rest of it is detail.

The first circle, in plain words

A restaurant pos is the system that takes an order at your counter, prices it, takes payment, prints a receipt and closes your day.

That sentence is the product. Around it sit optional modules, usually priced separately: table plans, stock, staff rotas, reporting, loyalty, marketing, and connections to delivery apps.

The core is normally very good. It is what the company was built to do and thousands of busy services have shaped it. Buy a solid one, put it where the money changes hands, and stop reading comparison tables about it. Cutting cost on the counter is a false saving, because that machine is the one thing your staff touch a hundred times a night.

What the first circle will not do

Here is the sentence that matters most in this article. A restaurant pos system serves the person standing in front of it.

It cannot hand a menu to somebody sitting at home. It has no way to tell a customer anything once that customer has left. And it will never notice that a regular who came every Thursday has been missing for eight weeks. None of those is a feature a module will add one day. They belong to the other circle.

"Draw two circles. One is the counter, which is what people buy. The other is every order that never reaches the counter, which is what they lose. In most restaurants the second circle is the bigger one."

— Anzul Aqeel, founder of Get Menu

In this region the second circle is mostly WhatsApp, where an order arrives as a sentence typed at somebody who is also cooking. Treat it as a front door rather than a nuisance: Meta documents the platform for business use, and your customers are already living in it.

The five jobs sitting in the second circle

Write these down before you buy anything, because nobody at a hardware demo will raise them.

1. Somebody has to see the menu. Not a photo of it, and not a PDF that zooms badly on a phone.
2. Somebody has to place an order without speaking to you. Otherwise every order costs one of your staff several minutes.
3. The kitchen has to receive it complete. Every choice, in writing, without a translation step.
4. Somebody has to find the address. Tower, entrance, flat, and the right delivery fee for that building.
5. You have to remember who ordered. Or you begin again with a stranger every night.

Filling the second circle without buying hardware

This is the part we build, and none of it needs a machine on your counter.

Seeing the menu. You get an ordering page of your own, on a link with your name in it, and 12 page layouts to pick from so a grill does not have to read like a bakery. In the room, each table has a code you design yourself, so the sticker on the table looks like it belongs there, and the print pack arrives by email. Our QR menu guide covers the placement.

Placing an order. You keep the menu yourself, in a browser. Add-ons and options each carry a price of their own, and a required choice cannot be skipped on the way to checkout. A big menu is uploaded from a spreadsheet instead of typed. Prices are settled from the live menu at the moment of checkout, so a dish you raise at midnight is charged correctly on the next order. Counts on items and options fall as they sell, so what has run out greys itself out.

Reaching the kitchen. Nobody retypes anything. The customer is confirmed, the managers' group gets a ticket with every choice on it, and the riders' group gets a link holding the GPS pin the customer dropped. Between them, that is 3 messages in about 2 seconds. Because the code belongs to the table, a dine-in ticket already knows where the food is going, and several phones at one table still produce a single bill.

Finding the address. A delivery fee can be set for each building, so a tower and a house in a suburb are charged their own rate rather than one flat number. Your rider then follows a link that asks for no account and no password.

Remembering the customer. A stamp is earned by the order, not by anyone at the counter. Regulars climb into tiers that bring an automatic discount with them, and their card sits in the wallet already on the phone, using Google's loyalty card format. Upsells, bundles at a fixed price and coupons all take caps, exclusions and an expiry date, and the better of two automatic discounts is the only one that applies. Our guide to loyalty programs covers how to choose the mechanic.

And the paperwork. A tax invoice carrying your registration number is there for the customer to download as a PDF, no login required. Hold every supplier to the official standard here, which the Federal Tax Authority sets out on its tax invoices page, and hold whoever sells you the counter to it as well.

Where the two circles touch

They meet in one place, and it is worth planning for. A guest sitting at a table orders from the code on the table, then pays you at the counter or on your card machine when the food arrives.

So the order is created in the second circle and settled in the first. Nothing needs to be typed twice, and neither system has to pretend to be the other.

The question that tells you most about a supplier

Not the feature list. Ask instead what you are allowed to change yourself, without a phone call and without a fee.

Can you edit a price at eleven at night? Add an item on a Saturday? Change your opening hours, your delivery fees, your staff logins? A supplier who keeps those behind a support ticket is selling you a service contract with a screen attached, and you will feel it every time the menu moves.

The limits, stated up front

Get Menu is not pos software for restaurant counters. No drawer opens, no card reader is driven, and your day is not closed by it. Buy those and keep them. Most restaurants who use us never changed the hardware they already had.

Guests pay you and not the software. Cash, or your own card reader, when the food is in front of them. No money moves through the website at all. That is a real limit with a real upside: there are no card details in there for anybody to steal, and after 120 days the details of an order are dropped without anyone doing anything.

We keep prices on the pricing page and out of guides that age. Trying it asks for no card, and you get 15 days of it.

Frequently asked questions

What is a restaurant POS in simple terms?

The system at your counter that takes an order, prices it, takes payment, prints a receipt and closes your day.

Is Get Menu a restaurant POS?

No. Think of it as the second circle: menus, orders, stock and loyalty. It drives no drawer and no card terminal.

Do I need both?

If people pay you in person, yes. One of them takes money in the room, the other one looks after everything that happens outside the room.

How do customers pay?

They hand you cash, or tap on your own reader, when the food gets to them. The software never comes near the money.

Can I change my own menu and prices?

Yes, in a browser, whenever you like, including at midnight. Ask every supplier the same question before you sign.